The Senior Years by Konnie Enos

When I was a child it wasn’t uncommon to hear stories of children getting ahold of some type of medicine and eating them like candy. Before long people decided the best way to combat this was to put child proof, but not adult proof caps on the pill bottles.

Not long after these were introduced a humorous story came out about an older lady traveling alone. She had several medicines she had to take daily and they were now in child proof bottles. Since she had trouble getting the caps off herself, she told the hotel staff she might need help. They told her no problem they had an expert. When the time came she did need the help and they sent the expert in. It was a child.

It may have been nothing more than a humorous story but it was ironic that the woman needed the assistance of a child to open a child proof cap.

However it was after this story came out that pharmacies and drug companies started packaging some of their medicines in bottles that didn’t have child proof caps on them. Then they came out with two sided caps. One side is child proof and the other is easy open. My pharmacy will send my medicines with a child proof cap on them but also with an easy open one on the side. Your choice.

Since I was all of five when child proof caps were invented, I can’t really remember a time before they were around and I learned how to open them by the time I was ten. I found the story of the traveling senior citizen funny because I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t read the directions on the cap and get it open. Just like I could.

Then I learned about arthritis. After that I learned that some seniors just get weaker in the arms and have weaker grips.

As an adult, after computers became more widely used, they started talking about this syndrome that had been around for a long time but was now becoming more wide spread, and it affected the hands, carpal tunnel.

Okay, so there might be reasons older adults can’t open their pill bottles.

I was not one of them.

Then again, I wasn’t old.

Some years after I was told I had carpal tunnel I was prescribed a medicine that came in a child proof bottle. It was a squeeze and turn type, but it was particular in how it was squeezed. It was an as needed medicine but I don’t think I took it more than a few times simply because I could never get it open. If my husband wasn’t there to do it for me then I simply couldn’t take it. Considering it was for my asthma, it wasn’t a good thing.

The next time it was prescribed for me I convinced the doctor to request an easier open dispensing method. Now I get that particular medicine in individual dose easy twist open vials.

Even with that, I had no problems with any other type of child proof cap.

Until recently.

My dog needs allergies medicines once in a while and her pills are in a bottle with a simple push and twist cap. For the life of me I cannot get that thing open. I have become that senior lady in the story who can’t open the child proof caps.

Do you want to hear the funniest part?

My dear, older husband (by a whopping six months) does open that bottle for me, each and every time.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.